Japanese Permanent Hair Straightening

About :

The salon is NALU Hair Salon in Omotesando and yes, they have employees who speak English!http://www.nalu-style.com/contact.aspx?c=9

I did Japanese permanent hair straightening, aka thermal reconditioning, in mid-September. How it works is:

Your hair shaft has two types of bonds that contribute to its shape. Hydrogen bonds, and disulphide bonds. Hydrogen bonds change your hair shape temporarily and can be affected by moisture and heat, hence frizzy hair on humid days and curling or straightening with flat irons. Disulphide bonds are very strong and maintain a permanent shape, unless you break them apart with chemicals.

Japanese permanent hair straightening uses a chemical to break apart those bonds. The stylist then straightens the hair with an iron, setting the shape you what your hair to maintain, and then reseals the bonds with another chemical, permanently locking your hair into that new shape.

This salon in particular also adds a treatment to the hair before resealing it to keep it as moisturized, soft, and silky as possible.

You're not supposed to do it if your hair has been dyed a lot since it can damage the hair, so not everyone is able to get this type of straight perm. Before this I had only ever done one salon treatment, never colored my hair, and very rarely even straightened or blow dried it. But my frizz was crazy! I've had exactly zero issues with frizz in the two months since getting the straight perm.

You can also choose levels of how straight you want your hair to be. Since I have bangs I wanted those to look more natural rather than be perfectly straight, so they didn't apply the full strength treatment there.

I am still able to do some temporary hair curling (via those hydrogen bonds), although it really doesn't stay for any significant length of time at all. If I let me hair dry in a braid it will still come out a bit wavy, but not as wavy as before, and it doesn't last as long. And since I do tuck my hair behind my ears almost all the time, the little wispy hair there now retains that behind-the-ear curl shape.

If you're curious about the chemistry behind how this works, here are some links explaining it more in depth!https://helix.northwestern.edu/blog/2014/05/science-curlshttp://www.bellemocha.com/2013/08/japanese-straightening-healthier.htmlhttp://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/42760/how-do-disulphide-bonds-in-hair-cause-curling

Popular Comments:

There are a crazy number of comments and quite a bit of confusion about the different methods of hair straightening, so I did a bunch of research to compare the main methods people are mentioning! Hopefully this should answer like 90% of the questions here!! haha

Japanese permanent straightening aka rebonding aka thermal reconditioning-Created in Japan by Yuko Yamashita, patented in 1995-Permanent (new growth is not affected)-Uses chemicals to break disulphide bonds in hair, a flat iron to straight the hair (setting it into place), and then chemicals again to re-set the bonds-New hair that grows out will be natural, so if you don't get that treated as well you can have a strange divide between straight and curly hair-Can't generally be used on already treated hair (hair that has been dyed a lot, etc)

Brazilian keratin treatment aka Brazilian blowout-Created in Brazil by Mauricio Ribeiro, brought to US in 2007-Said to last 3 months on average (eventually washes out)-Coats hair strands in keratin treatment to reduce frizz, not generally strong enough to perfectly straighten curly hair-This is the treatment that uses formaldehyde (some types don't, but those supposedly wear off much quicker since the formaldehyde is what's used to bond the keratin to the hair)-Can be used on dyed hair

Relaxers-Created in USA, 1905 by Garrett Morgan-Said to last 6 - 8 weeks (oops! I was informed this timeframe is for the time you can last before needing to touch up new hair growth, and that the actual relaxer is permanent)-There are several types, but they use chemicals of a higher pH than Japanese straightening to break down the disulphide bonds, relaxing tight curls. The bonds are not rebonded afterward like they are in Japanese straightening.-Some types have strong chemicals that can burn the scalp

uff really wanna do that since i often get so urgh like i have straight hair but it get's greasy so easy, my damn bangs ends up not straight one day and i even got my hair dresser to try cut my hair like regular japanese i guess so if bangs fucks up then i'm fucked cause i wanna hide my forhead

although i'd like to do this, i love my hair. It's very frizzy and puffy and my curls are very loose but i'm working on it so it can be the healthiest it can be even though sometimes i just wanna give up and have straight hair forever. I might consider it in the future though!

Thank you for the amazing video! I've always wanted to know what it's like and if it seriously does air dry straight, I wish it was more common in Australia i only know of 2 places and it it's 300 aus dollars I think.

So from my understanding, it’s possible to not straighten your hair but leave it permanently brushed? Since they broke the bonds or something, straighten and brushed her hair, then fixed the bonds leaving it that way forever if you just didn’t straighten your hair it might work. Never brushing your hair would be nice